


For Want of a Nail

by rabbitprint



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Creation, Gen, Ifrita
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitprint/pseuds/rabbitprint
Summary: Spoilers through 5.3, set pre-Sundering. An Azem short, second person POV.New to their office, Azem pays a visit to Lahabrea to watch him work.
Relationships: Azem & Lahabrea (Final Fantasy XIV)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39
Collections: Final Fantasy Write Prompt Challenge 2020





	For Want of a Nail

**Author's Note:**

> _Prompt #12 from FFxivWrite 2020: 'tooth and nail.'_

They say that the privilege of getting to watch the current Lahabrea work is a great honor. Students and scholars both attend his presentations whenever he offers them, taking down copious notes as the man spins out latticeworks of pure aether across the ceilings of lecture halls. His lessons are performances and instruction both, as if Lahabrea has never learned how to distinguish the two, and instead celebrates every act of creation with a gleeful abandon that he unconsciously assumes everyone else to similarly possess.

You take advantage of your new position to inquire, shyly, if you might visit him directly in his workrooms someday, and are delighted when he sends an invitation for the very next week.

He is already deep in his craft when you arrive, carefully announcing yourself with a small crystal light at the door -- silent and unobtrusive, so as not to disturb anyone's concentration and trigger an accident of fatal imagination. It takes half a bell before he reaches a natural pause in his work. You do not mind the wait. The hallway outside is decorated not with previous concepts which have already received acclaim, but with new designs still in the midst of being refined. A few other researchers are busy examining diagrams at the far end of the hall, gossiping about their next projects as they lean on Lahabrea's inspirations as a starting point.

You politely examine the projection of a vilekin which appears to be a flying, fanged centipede brandishing a dozen dragonfly wings, and puzzle over what Lahabrea might have originally intended for it.

"Ah, Azem! Come in," he sings when he opens the door to stick his head out, and then holds it wide for you to enter. The ends of his hair appear singed; you can smell charcoal and char drifting out from the workroom's wards. "I'm just starting a few new sketches today. This one holds particular promise, I believe. Have a look."

Beckoned by the man's enthusiastic chatter, you step gingerly past the main wards cloaking the workroom. Their protection is heavy enough to be a tangible wave of air that you must physically press through; the energies send tingles over your skin with each step forward, automatically wicking away any excess aether you may have picked up during your trip across Amaurot. Each circular worktable is host to even more wards wrapped around their perimeters, carefully isolating concepts from cross-contamination with other ideas.

"I'm grateful for your attention," you say formally, but Lahabrea is already waving you closer to the central table, where several glittering shells of aether hover in suspension around a knot of simmering flame.

You can recognize the shape as an elemental figure, distilled from a single, pure source of aether and rejecting all others. Right now, it is in its clumsiest stage: little more than a sphere of energy which has been sliced into rings like an onion, spread out to allow for precise examination of its base formulas. A proof-of-product that stands between theoretical and tangible, where the feasibility for its design must be established before any permanent details are polished out.

"Fire aether is ever-volatile, of course." A fact which any student in their first hundred years of learning knows -- but you can tell that Lahabrea is merely rambling in his enthusiasm, distracted by his own joy of creation, and you do not take the lecture personally. "It does not ration its own fuel, but will consume whatever is available, as _rapidly_ as possible. It falls to its wielders to place those limits upon it. Here, watch."

With that, Lahabrea leaps straight from basic principles all the way to advanced manipulations without pause; he flicks his fingers once, and four spikes suddenly protrude from the sphere's outermost layer, sliding out like claws before detaching from the mass. Like darts, they plunge into the containment ward, burying themselves in the walls of their prison where they simmer and seethe.

"Thus, like roots, if we can generate a means of connecting the concept to its environment regardless of its physical location, and constrain its consumption based around the average of those values, we can prolong its longevity and stabilize the concept's intake throughout the arc of its manifestation." His finger jerks from aether point to aether point as he lights them up, tracing formulas for dispersion that calculate values faster than you can match them. "These aether nails would provide that link between the concept and an external force that it could attach to for stability. In turn, they could also significantly enhance the concept's use of elemental aether without draining itself. I was thinking I could shape them into teeth," he adds brightly, as if he has already drawn up the diagrams and is simply pretending to debate.

Desperately, you try to follow along with his explanation, but Lahabrea's infamously mercurial disposition has outmatched you; the man has moved too quickly, like wildfire himself.

"Teeth?" you cannot help asking faintly.

Lahabrea twiddles his fingers at the layers of the orb. Obediently, the rings of aether collapse back into a single sphere before sprouting four mouths upon its surface, all of which are fanged.

You stare at the concept as it opens and closes its maws at you eagerly, remembering the centipede in the hall.

"I think I like the nails better." With the vast discrepancy between your and the Speaker's skills in phantom creation, it might be unfair for you to volunteer such plebeian opinions -- but you cannot quell the mental image that Lahabrea's words have elicited, and if _you_ cannot keep yourself from imagining it, you know that other Ascians will not be able to either. "When I consider teeth as a central theme for it -- here, may I?"

Lahabrea blinks, but pulls his own control away from the aether orb to allow you to reach towards it, and you tentatively push the vision in your mind forward.

The sphere rumbles. Its surface roils -- and then, like a coat of fur, dozens of tiny fangs sprout out from the orb, independent of any mouth to own them. They ripple like a field of razor-sharp grass, rolling about in curiosity for anything to devour.

Lahabrea's enthusiasm noticeably dims. "Ah. You do have a point." The teeth wriggle hopefully in his direction. "Several, in fact."

"The nails are brilliant," you assure him hastily; such a word evokes feelings of stability and strength, all of which seem in line with Lahabrea's intentions. "But... the associations of a tooth may be too strong, mayhap."

The sudden stillness of the man is unnerving. He stares fixedly at the concept, every ilm of his body arrested. In contrast to his usual enthusiasm, Lahabrea's eyes are distant now, his gaze remote and detached. Underneath the surface, his mind must be working frantically; in the meantime, he resembles his own aether, a potential waiting to erupt.

You stand beside him, equally frozen as you wait to see his verdict: if he is simply lost in thought, or if you have utterly ruined any respect Lahabrea once held in you, and he is now debating how best to eject you from his vicinity.

Thankfully, it is the former. Lahabrea shifts from foot to foot, and the act thaws him out from a rigid statue into a person again. "I agree. It shall be nails for Ifrita, then." The smile he turns on you is wicked with delight. "May you look forward to evaluating her once she is complete."


End file.
